The first dev diary "Break It, Take It, Make It" covers inventory and resources.

Following their streak of open development, the devs at Sony Online Entertainment have released its first developer diary for EverQuest Next Landmark. In "Break It, Take It, Make It", Senior Producer Terry Michaels and Creative Director Jeff Butler briefly discuss items and how they'll be managed. There are two key takeaways from this dev diary:

1. They've currently produced 50 resources for the game, including 10+ metals and 10 gems across five tiers. These tiers "correspond to the depth within the world that you find" these items.

2. Three kinds of inventory: personal, chest, and vault. All three types can be expanded.

Comments

I like SOE and all the EQ games...but I feel like they are using Landmark as a big distraction to sate our thirst for EQNext knowledge. I'm sure there are a lot of folks who are excited by Landmark, but it's really not going to do anything for me. I'm not a builder. I would like to here more information about EQNext.

Still smells like Minecraft to me (not a bad thing, just giving due credit).

From a crafter/builder/sim game viewpoint: 50 resources with useful combinations of how much you combine and how you combine them... is a lot of possibilities and much preferable to 500 resources with limited use for each one.

From a "this becomes the nextgen of EQ mmo crafting system basis" point of view... EQ1 had how many tradeskill components at launch? (too many). I really hope they've learned from all SoE titles and other modern mmos in respects to how to make a tradeskill system:

1. fun (1 hour of right clicking repetively = not fun). 100s of useless recipes and common failures on trivial combines doesn't make sense... an expert blacksmith can make an iron ring 99% of the time) 2. useful at all levels (I know next apparently isn't going to have levels.... so all jobs/skills) 3. viable/purposeful in various playstyles and not just niche "flavouring", sellable is okay, desirable is a must... I like the games where you can make truly elite stuff for yourself if you master a particular trade, while making respectable coin off others from the not-quite-as-nice stuff you can sell 4. future adaptability (the economic tradeskill "resets" every expac in EQ were silly. Reforging (banded + expac #2 drop... then banded + expac #3 drop) and old combines (so the shade silk robe you made at level 15 to wear is something higher level tailors want as a base component) become components of higher combines makes more sense then creating thousands of new basic components and making everything made with lower skill useless.

I'm excited about the harvesting system their developing. I can't wait to start digging! (When I was a kid, we tried to dig our own Hogan's Heroes tunnels in our yard.) I like the general direction the developers are taking with inventory. At the same time, I wish we had more information. The travel system and death consequences system have been hotly debated at the EQN Roundtable forum. One thing that has come out of the debate is the idea, to enable a Win-win scenario for both those who want a high risk, low convenience game and those who want a low risk, high convenience game, ...is to have a separate Immersion server for those who want high risk, low convenience. There's a Blurb at Wepolls, that sets out the proposed, tentative ruleset description for such an Immersion server. If you're interested in looking over the description of what an Immersion server might look like, head over to http://www.wepolls.com/p/20521024/Would-you-create-a-character-on-an-Immersion-Server-in-Everquest-Next-%2C-EQ-Next-%28See-Blurb-below-for-proposed-server-rules.

Since they said we would have 50 resources ( five tiers of 10 resources each), this makes me hopeful that there will be a wide range of things we can craft. The more things that the players can make for the use of other players, the more responsive and dynamic (and player-driven ) the in-game economy will be. I'm curious to know more about the appearance features linked to function that Dave Georgeson spoke of. This intrigues me, and it makes sense, because form follows function.